Once upon a time, a single video game sat alone on a store shelf. This lonely game wasn’t shiny like the others. It didn’t have any fancy graphics or eye-popping pictures on the box. It had no action, no blood, no violence and no aggression. The game did have layers of grey cobwebs and dust covering it.

Sometimes one could see droplets of liquid trickling down the game box, but this wasn’t someone’s attempt to clean it. The drops would trickle only in the middle of the night. Those nights in the store when feet fell silent, chatter ceased, security guards finished their last rounds and the clerk killed the lights.

Until one day when a little girl changed the story. She saw the lonely video game and heard it call to her, cleaned it off and bought it. The clerk and customers all laughed, but the little girl wasn’t going to ignore the game’s pain or let the laughter change her mind.

“Thank you for saving me from a life of endless consuming and being thrown away. I can’t wait to be free,” said the game. Then the box vanished into thin air. The little girl smiled even though she had lost the video game that called her.